Tuesday, March 15, 2011

March Madness - 200th Post Giveaway

The giveaway is now closed and the winners will be announced in a new post.

It's March Madness time and I have just reached my 200th post. Now I'm not into basketball, but I can relate to the madness part. First, it's been a very long, cold and dreary winter so I'm feeling the effects of cabin fever and looking forward to spring. It's just beginning to warm up here in Toronto and I certainly hope it continues to do so with no more surprises from Mother Nature.

Since this is a blog about quilting, let's talk about things that drive you nuts when it comes to quilting, this should be good for a laugh of two. I'm a true believer in laughter helping to cure what ails you, so I'm hoping that this entry can make you laugh and put a smile on your face.

So perhaps I will start out with a couple of "What was I thinking" moments that just happened recently. I place an order for some fabric about a month ago and was beginning to wonder what had happened to it, since normally it should take about 2 weeks to get here. I then get an e-mail just over a week ago saying that they got my order returned to them because my address was incomplete and I would be credited the cost of the fabric but unfortunately not the shipping (that's normal). So I go on their web site and check out what I had entered on my account page and I completely forgot to put in the street number for where I live - DUH!. That certainly makes it rather difficult to deliver anything when they can't find which location on the street to drop off the package at.

Early this year I was looking to buy some templates to make Dresden plate blocks and found some nice ones made by Ardco from precision metal that are window style which would allow you to audition fabric if you wanted to fussy cut the plates. The templates came in 6", 12" and 14" block sizes. The price wasn't bad so I decided to order all 3 sizes. When they arrived I look at the templates and I have this puzzled look on my face, the 6" template looks very small to me. Boy this would be a lot of work cutting these tiny plates, there is no way that they are 6". Then it dawned on me, DUH, the individual plates are not 6" in size, the finished block is 6" in size. How many times has this happened to you, when you read something, but you completely misinterpret what you read. So the templates that actually make a finished 12" or 14" block aren't bad, but for me, the 6" one is just to much fussy work that I will never bother to use it.

My last recent madding event was when I was working on the Secret Garden quilt. I typically measure twice, cut once. Well with that quilt, I think my motto should have been measure twice, then measure once again before cutting. Several times I ended up cutting blocks the wrong size, sashing the wrong size, and finally when I was sewing together my binding, which I cut at 2 1/2", the last piece didn't quite match. So when I measured it, for some reason it was cut at 2 1/4". My bag of extra scraps grew faster this time around.

So time to show you what I have this time around for the March Madness giveaway. The first giveaway will honour the 6" Dresden plate template. You will receive the template, a book titled "Dresden Plates of Distinction" by Sharon Stroud and 4 pieces of fabric.

The second giveaway is a book titled "The Quilter's Home: Fall" by Lois Krushina Fletcher and 4 pieces of fall related fabric.

Both of these giveaways will be based on a random selection from the comments that people leave. To win one of these giveaways you must answer any one of the following 3 questions to share a little laughter with everyone. If you just leave a comment saying to count me in and not answer one of the questions then you will not be entered in the draw. If you have a preference for only one of the prizes over the other let me know and I will make sure your name is in for the one you want.

In addition I will have at least 1, maybe 2 bundles of fabric to give as my choice to the person(s) who make me laugh the most &/or puts the biggest smile on my face. I'm still picking those fabrics, so no photos but they will be good quality quilting fabrics. So here are the questions. You just need to answer one.

Question 1: What makes you mad when it comes to quilting in general and why? Is it all the ironing, running out of thread, figuring out the patterns, putting the quilt sandwich together, etc.

Question 2: What was one of the more recent things that happened to you that is quilt related that drove you nuts and why? (running out of fabric, the dog stealing your blocks, etc.)

Question 3: Have you ever bought anything, be it quilting supplies, fabric, patterns, etc. and then either when you got them, or even a year or two later, say to your self - What was I thinking. If so, what was it and what is weird, ugly or useless about this item now that you look at it.

The giveaway is open until Wed March 23rd at 6 p.m. eastern daylight savings time. Good luck to everyone and I'm looking forward to reading everyone's maddening stories.

5 comments:

Congrats on your 200+ posts.I'd love to win the dresden templates.I started with Hexis and was lucky enough to purchase some old fashion metal templates - very good.I am so disapointed with myself about not being able to 'understand' the quilt paterns and not being able to reduce or enlarge a block with accuracy.I am a beginner and started to doubt I will get to be an intermediate!!Gina

The thing that I hate the most about quilt is basting the layers together. Once I've made a top I just want it to be done, without all the pinning, then stitching then binding!! I'm just too impatient I know :)

Happy 200! I love most everything to do with quilting. But if I had to pick just one thing that is difficult for me it would be sandwiching and machine quilting a large quilt.I have had many 'what was I thinking' moments. And I have several full bins to show for it. However, no that I have discovered the 'Trip Around the World' pattern, I may have to use some of them up. I get frustrated when I quilt something to the back of my work, or when I snag a corner of the backing into the quilting. One time I was just finishing a charity quilt and cut a hole in the back when I snipped the last thread. I ended up appliqueing a heart over the cut and then to make it look like a design element, I appliqued several move hearts onto the back. It looked great!

Congrats on your 200th post!Your request for "recent madness" stopped me in my path because the one I was going to use is old, but I'm back on track now.

The most maddening things about Quilting actually have very little to do with quilting at all. Firstly is the appreciation. Things like "That is a beautiful baby blanket, but I'm not going to buy it because I don't like the person I'm giving it to that much." Say what?

Secondly I am constantly at war over my cloth tape aka the tape measure. You see when I first started quilting my DD was smaller; she discovered she could convince the cats to play with her if she ran through the house pulling my cloth tape behind her. It's brightly colored and the metal end makes a tink sound on the floor as she runs so even Sunny (whom my neighbor calls my blind cat) can follow it. How is that current? Well these days, she's still doing it, and more to the point the cats know the sound. Imagine trying to measure a delicate quilt top with a cat jumping for the cloth tape within the folds of the quilt.

Since I answered the first two questions, here's my shot at the 3rd as well. My worthless items are clothing Patterns. Joann's had a 10 for $10 sale and I bought 10 (two summers ago). Take a guess how many of those patterns I've actually used - 3 and yes I think that's doing pretty good, because I learned something about myself during that time; I don't like making clothes. After all you take a perfectly good piece of fabric and cut it all WONKY so it's nearly worthless for a much better cause - QUILTS! Or at least least you could have spent the money you used on that fabric to buy better quilting fabric...